2008
T. S. Eliot Prize
Winner
Jen Hadfield was born in Cheshire and lives in Shetland. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003 and was given a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary in 2002 to help her complete her first collection, Almanacs, which was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2005. She used her Eric Gregory Award to fund a year's residence in Canada, where she gave readings from Halifax to Vancouver. Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in Spring 2008, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and won the T. S. Eliot Prize. Since then, she has published further collections with Picador Poetry including Byssus (2014) and The Stone Age (2021), and was awarded £140,000 as one of eight winners of the US Windham-Campbell Prize.
Bloodaxe Books
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Shortlisted Works
Shortlisted Poets
Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. After working for many years as a...
Peter Bennet has published numerous books of poetry, including Sky Riding (1984); All The Real (1994); and Goblin...
Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast, where he lived. He worked in the Arts Council of...
Robert Crawford was born in Lanarkshire. His collections A Scottish Assembly (1990) and Talkies (1992) were published by...
Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, worked for some years in Yorkshire, and has...
Mary Doty is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry, including School of the Arts, Source and My...
The poet, editor and critic Mick Imlah was born in Aberdeen on 26 September 1956. Brought up near...
Glyn Maxwell was born in England to Welsh parents and now lives in London. He has won several...
Stephen Romer’s collections of poetry include Idols, Plato’s Ladder and Tribute (with Oxford University Press), and Yellow Studio (Carcanet...
Judges
CHAIR
Andrew Motion was UK Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009, is co-founder of the online Poetry Archive, and...
Related News Stories
Between 2006 and 2015, the Poetry Book Society ran the T. S. Eliot School Shadowing Scheme (later renamed the Writing Competition) in collaboration with the English and Media Centre, offering GCSE and A Level students the chance to get involved with the judging of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Two...
This article on the T. S. Eliot Prize was first published on the Poetry Book Society website in 2009. Congratulations to Jen Hadfield for winning the T. S. Eliot Prize 2008 for Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books). The other poets on the shortlist were: Moniza Alvi for Europa (Bloodaxe Books) Peter...
